In the male-dominated world of horse racing, pioneer female jockeys had to overcome much to do what they loved

Early female jockeys faced brutal conditions and even worse attitudes within the male-dominated sport of horse racing.

The sport of kings didn’t want any princesses in the saddles. Some say it was because it threatened the jockeys’ manhood, that if a woman could be a successful jockey, it would lessen their value and what they did. Others, like pioneer jockey Diane Crump, say it was just a matter of men not wanting to work beside women.

Crump, at 19 years old, was the first woman to ride in a thoroughbred race, at Hialeah Park Race Track in Florida on Feb. 7, 1969. She had to be escorted by police. She finished 10th in the race on Bridle n Bit. She rode the horse right back at Tampa and won, but the victory was ineligible due to shipping rules, so Barbara Jo Rubin was credited with the first win by a female jockey.

“I believe the men resented us then, not so much because they were threatened, but we were intruding on their world,” Crump said. “We were moving into the turf that they thought they owned. They felt they owned the sport, but they didn’t own the business, and they don’t own the sport.”

Facilities were brutal for women back then, Crump said.

“I remember having to pee in a cup when I didn’t have time to run all the way to the public ladies’ room,” Crump said.

Crump also was the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby in 1970. She finished 15th on Fathom in the 17-horse field.

“That was great for me as a rider, as a female and as a person,” Crump said of her Derby experience. “For someone to think I was capable of riding in the Kentucky Derby was a huge step forward.”

Crump held her own with the male chauvinist jockeys and others in the male-dominated game. When a jockey held her saddle from behind, she took her whip to him, and the two whacked each other down the track. When the jockey came off the track, women in the crowd pelted the male jockey with tomatoes, eggs, whatever they could find to hurl at him.

“When I was 16 years old and first got my exercise rider’s license, there was not one other female stable hand,” Crump once said. “But by the 1990s, around half of them were women. Somebody had to open the door. It wasn’t all down to me, but I think I was a big part of that. The mentality in the 1960s was that women weren’t smart or strong enough to be jockeys. But I proved that a woman could do the job. I like to think I was a little footprint on the path to equality.”

On March 14, 1969, Rubin became the first female rider to win a race, doing so in New York by taking the third at Aqueduct aboard 13-1 shot Brave Galaxy. She had been set to ride earlier, but male jockeys at Tropical Park in Florida threatened to boycott if she raced. Her dressing room in her trailer was pelted with rocks. Windows were broken. But after winning seven of her first 11 mounts, she appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the top variety hour of its day, and on “To Tell the Truth,” the top game show of its time. She remembers when trainers wouldn’t even let her walk beneath their shed rows because they represented “bad luck” to superstitious types.